Research on realizing more shift-stages of an automatic transmission are undertaken to achieve enhancement of fuel consumption and better drivability, and recently, increase of oil price is triggering a hard competition in enhancing fuel consumption of a vehicle.
In this sense, research on an engine has been undertaken to achieve weight reduction and to enhance fuel consumption by so-called downsizing and research on an automatic transmission has been performed to simultaneously provide better drivability and fuel consumption by achieving more shift stages.
In order to achieve more shift stages for an automatic transmission of a vehicle, the number of parts is typically increased, which may deteriorate installation ability, production cost, weight and/or power flow efficiency. Therefore, in order to maximally enhance fuel consumption of an automatic transmission having more shift stages, it is important for better efficiency to be derived by a smaller number of parts. In this respect, an eight-speed automatic transmission has been recently introduced, and a planetary gear train for an automatic transmission enabling more shift stages is under investigation.
An automatic transmission of eight or more shift-stages typically includes three to four planetary gear sets and five to seven control elements (frictional elements), and may easily become lengthy, thereby deteriorating installation ability. In this regard, disposing planetary gear sets in parallel or employing dog clutches instead of wet-type control elements is sometimes attempted. However, such an arrangement may not be widely applicable, and using dog clutches may easily deteriorate shift-feel.
Considering that gear ratio spans of recently developed eight-speed automatic transmissions are typically between 6.5 and 7.5, fuel consumption enhancement is not very large. In the case of a gear ratio span of an eight-speed automatic transmission having a level above 9.0, it is difficult to maintain step ratios between adjacent shift stages to be linear, by which driving efficiency of an engine and drivability of a vehicle deteriorated. Thus, researches studies are under investigation for developing a high efficiency automatic transmission having nine or more speeds.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.